The First Stages And Incidents Of The Expedition Were Not Exactly
Propitious.
The Dover Road was a byword for its charges; the Via
Alba might have been paved with the silver wrung from reluctant
and indignant passengers.
Smollett characterized the chambers as
cold and comfortless, the beds as "paultry" (with "frowsy," a
favourite word), the cookery as execrable, wine poison,
attendance bad, publicans insolent, and bills extortion,
concluding with the grand climax that there was not a drop of
tolerable malt liquor to be had from London to Dover. Smollett
finds a good deal to be said for the designation of "a den of
thieves" as applied to that famous port (where, as a German lady
of much later date once complained, they "boot ze Bible in ze
bedroom, but ze devil in ze bill", and he grizzles lamentably
over the seven guineas, apart from extras, which he had to pay
for transport in a Folkestone cutter to Boulogne Mouth.
Having once arrived at Boulogne, Smollett settled down regularly
to his work as descriptive reporter, and the letters that he
wrote to his friendly circle at home fall naturally into four
groups. The first Letters from II. to V. describe with Hogarthian
point, prejudice and pungency, the town and people of Boulogne.
The second group, Letters VI.-XII., deal with the journey from
Boulogne to Nice by way of Paris, Lyon, Nimes, and Montpellier.
The third group, Letters XIII. -XXIV., is devoted to a more
detailed and particular delineation of Nice and the Nicois. The
fourth, Letters XXV.-XLI., describes the Italian expedition and
the return journey to Boulogne en route for England, where the
party arrive safe home in July 1765.
Smollett's account of Boulogne is excellent reading, it forms an
apt introduction to the narrative of his journey, it familiarises
us with the milieu, and reveals to us in Smollett a man of
experience who is both resolute and capable of getting below the
surface of things. An English possession for a short period in
the reign of the Great Harry, Boulogne has rarely been less in
touch with England than it was at the time of Smollett's visit.
Even then, however, there were three small colonies,
respectively, of English nuns, English Jesuits, and English
Jacobites. Apart from these and the English girls in French
seminaries it was estimated ten years after Smollett's sojourn
there that there were twenty-four English families in residence.
The locality has of course always been a haunting place for the
wandering tribes of English. Many well-known men have lived or
died here both native and English. Adam Smith must have been
there very soon after Smollett. So must Dr. John Moore and
Charles Churchill, one of the enemies provoked by the Briton, who
went to Boulogne to meet his friend Wilkes and died there in
1764. Philip Thicknesse the traveller and friend of Gainsborough
died there in 1770. After long search for a place to end his days
in Thomas Campbell bought a house in Boulogne and died there, a
few months later, in 1844. The house is still to be seen, Rue St.
Jean, within the old walls; it has undergone no change, and in
1900 a marble tablet was put up to record the fact that Campbell
lived and died there. The other founder of the University of
London, Brougham, by a singular coincidence was also closely
associated with Boulogne. [Among the occupants of the English
cemetery will be found the names of Sir Harris Nicolas, Basil
Montagu, Smithson Pennant, Sir William Ouseley, Sir William
Hamilton, and Sir C. M. Carmichael. And among other literary
celebrities connected with the place, apart from Dickens (who
gave his impressions of the place in Household Words, November
1854) we should include in a brief list, Charles Lever, Horace
Smith, Wilkie Collins, Mrs. Henry Wood, Professor York Powell,
the Marquis of Steyne (Lord Seymour), Mrs. Jordan, Clark Russell,
and Sir Conan Doyle. There are also memorable associations with
Lola Montes, Heinrich Heine, Becky Sharpe, and above all Colonel
Newcome. My first care in the place was to discover the rampart
where the Colonel used to parade with little Clive. Among the
native luminaries are Daunou, Duchenne de Boulogne, one of the
foremost physiologists of the last century, an immediate
predecessor of Charcot in knowledge of the nervous system, Aug.
Mariette, the Egyptologist, Aug. Angellier, the biographer of
Burns, Sainte-Beuve, Prof. Morel, and "credibly," Godfrey de
Bouillon, of whom Charles Lamb wrote "poor old Godfrey, he must
be getting very old now." The great Lesage died here in 1747.]
The antiquaries still dispute about Gessoriacum, Godfrey de
Bouillon, and Charlemagne's Tour. Smollett is only fair in
justifying for the town, the older portions of which have a
strong medieval suggestion, a standard of comparison slightly
more distinguished than Wapping. He never lets us forget that he
is a scholar of antiquity, a man of education and a speculative
philosopher. Hence his references to Celsus and Hippocrates and
his ingenious etymologies of wheatear and samphire, more
ingenious in the second case than sound. Smollett's field of
observation had been wide and his fund of exact information was
unusually large. At Edinburgh he had studied medicine under Monro
and John Gordon, in company with such able and distinguished men
as William Hunter, Cullen, Pitcairn, Gregory, and Armstrong - and
the two last mentioned were among his present correspondents. As
naval surgeon at Carthagena he had undergone experience such as
few literary men can claim, and subsequently as compiler,
reviewer, party journalist, historian, translator, statistician,
and lexicographer, he had gained an amount of miscellaneous
information such as falls to the lot of very few minds of his
order of intelligence. He had recently directed the compilation
of a large Universal Geography or Gazetteer, the Carton or Vivien
de St. Martin if those days - hence his glib references to the
manners and customs of Laplanders, Caffres, Kamskatchans, and
other recondite types of breeding. His imaginative faculty was
under the control of an exceptionally strong and retentive
memory.
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